A Common Core Unit of Study Mardy Cowan & Meme Biek

This is Part II of the presentation. This section includes the goals and objectives, and the student section. For the teacher model, please see Part I.

Goal - To help students look to their future, and become aware of the character traits that will result in their academic and personal success Method - by exposing them to stories of children who have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to become successful, and by highlighting the character traits of these children

Students will read a biography and be able to identify Supports and Obstacles in the person’s life, evidenced by color-coded highlighting of the text. Students will identify four components in their biography; why the person is special, supports in their life, obstacles in their life, and key character traits that led to their success, as documented on their Grid. Students will brainstorm character traits from their biography, choose one key trait, and justify their choice with four citations from the text. What we want them to learn or be able to do...

Students will meet in their group and come to consensus about the four components, and write them on their poster. Every student will take an active speaking part in presenting their biography to the class, using their poster as a prop. By the end of the unit, students will be able to tell what characters are like by what they say, do, and how the illustrator/photographer portrays them, evidenced by growth on their Post-Assessment SSQ. By the end of the unit, students will be able to identify in writing some character traits that successful people share, evidenced by their Post-Assessment Paragraph. Objectives

We chose seven biographies from, a website called, Inspire My Kids. Inspiremykids.com

We briefly introduced each of the seven children. Students each chose the child that most captured their interest. (4-5 students to each biography) Students met with others who chose the same biography. They read about their person together.

Supports Obstacles Students worked together to locate and highlight Supports and Obstacles in their biographies (Videos are available of students working on biography in their teams)

They filled out their grids... ELD 3 BB ELD 3 BB

ELD 2 BB ELD 2 BB

They Mapped Character Traits

BB New student BB New student ELD 3 Basic ELD 3 Basic ELD 4 BB ELD 4 BB

They met again in their groups to come to consensus on the four aspects of their biography, and wrote them on their poster.

Groups used their Posters as props while presenting their biographies to the class. Students who shared the same biography met to divide the presentation into sections. Each student chose one of the four elements of the biography to present.

The class discussed what an audience member would need from a presenter. Students listed the characteristics of a good presenter; Presenters should; 1.Speak in a loud, clear voice. 2.Make eye-contact with the audience. 3.Memorize their presentation, or speak over their cue card to make their voice carry. 4.Be prepared to answer questions. 5.Stand upright and still while waiting for their turn and while speaking.

Groups were given time to write cue cards and to rehearse their presentation. Teachers monitored to advise and assist. (Videos of student presentations are available. Too big to include here)

Following the group presentations, students were given the opportunity to look at themselves; why each of them is special, their own supports, obstacles, and the character traits that would help them to be successful in life. They each made a personal poster.

Finally, students did their Post SSQ on Character Traits, and their Post Short Essay Questions.

All biographies, including biography used in teacher-model from - inspiremykids.org List of Character Traits by ckoett at TeachersPayTeachers.comckoett Character Map form from – by Allison Rousseau at TeachersPayTeachers.com–Allison Rousseau Sources Used in this Unit